Last month, I interviewed Robert Levy, the Cato Institute senior fellow and constitutional lawyer, who successfully used a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment to overturn the D.C. gun ban in March. When the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Levy's case, Parker v. District of Columbia, it dissolved the strictest gun regulations on the books in any state and marked the first time this interpretation of the Second Amendment has been used to successfully overturn a state's gun law. When Levy and I spoke about his victory, he mentioned the likelihood that Parker would go before the Supreme Court. Today, that likelihood just got greater. The D.C. federal appeals court denied D.C.'s request for a second ruling before the entire court. (Originally, the case was heard before a three-judge panel.) So, Levy is likely off to the Supreme Court. Gun laws beware! If Parker is upheld in the Supreme Court, the ruling will jeopardize state gun laws across the nation, making them vulnerable to more legal challenges.

If you've scanned the news today, you've probably seen the story about the six men who were arrested before they could execute a plan to attack New Jersey's Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible."

According to a federal spokesman, four of the men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Turkey and one was born in Jordan. A report on this that I saw earlier had a quote from a federal official calling their plot a potential act of terrorism, but that quote has been removed -- this is where definitions get murky -- and currently there is no evidence that a foreign terrorist organization was involved.

I will say this: Worst. Plan. Ever. Not to make light of a plot to kill American servicemen (or anybody, really), but is there a worse place for six random dudes to attack than a United States Army base? Why not rob the police station while you're at it? They couldn't think of something that might have a higher chance of success and lower than a 100% chance of death?

Incredibly depressing news about Iraq: "One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005." I know this sounds simple-minded but my God, what an unbelievable horrible place to be a child, or maybe even worse, be a parent.

The U.S. placed 26th, tied with Croatia, Estonia and Poland. Nearly seven children die for every 1,000 live births in the United States. That was more than double the rate in Iceland, and 75 percent higher than rates in the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan and Slovenia.

The first two thirds of Obama's speech today got my hopes up that he was backing away from the corn-ethanol shtick. But the last third brought me down to earth. Even if corn-ethanol takes third place in his speech now, the corn-belt senator would probably never drop support for corn-ethanol subsidies, which may be the biggest greenwash ever.

All around, his proposals are better developed than in his speech one year ago. He proposes to raise fuel economy standards by 4 percent per year, instead of just 3 percent. He also wants to subsidize Detroit's move to hybrid vehicles. And he supports a carbon cap-and-trade system. What would work much better would be to tax carbon emissions and raise the fuel tax. But they don't call taxes the third rail for nothing.

"In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

Yup, Mitt Romney is courting the religious right (he made the statement at a graduation speech at Regent University, the college founded by Pat Robertson) the easiest way Republicans know how: bashing the French. Oh, and porn and violence:

"Pornography and violence poison our music and movies and TV and video games. The Virginia Tech shooter, like the Columbine shooters before him, had drunk from this cesspool."

Good heavens, can you imagine if Mitt Romney ever saw violent porn starring unmarried French people? His head would explode. But even a headless Mitt Romney would kowtow to the leaders of the religious right. You can't win in the GOP without doing so:

It was Romney's second appearance at Regent University in the past four months. His visits underscore the competition for support from top Christian conservative leaders such as Robertson, whose television programs have millions of viewers. Romney, along with several other GOP hopefuls, attended a convention of religious broadcasters in February. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani will appear at Regent next month.

As Josh writes here, there has been quite the flurry over the changing of hands (from young paralegal and diehard supporter to Obama's official campaign staff) of the unofficial, yet official-looking, 160,000 friend-boasting Barack Obama MySpace page. When the scandal blew up, there was talk that the 160,000 MySpace friends Joe Anthony, said diehard supporter, rallied together were theoretically worth a bundle of cash, and therefore all moral questions aside, the Obama campaign should pay up. Micah Sifry, founder of techPresident, (a site that monitors campaigns' web strategies) noted on the site:

Care2, the massive progressive email list vendor, charges about $1 per email address that they generate for a campaign.

But like Sifry points out, Anthony could not have generated this large number of members if it weren't for Obama's success and charisma, so it's not like he could expect to make $160,000 plus, but I'm betting, if he'd played his cards right, he could've raked in some dough. I mean, these campaigns pay media consultants big money to gather supporters the way Anthony did. Apparently, though, contrary to what Obama's campaign staff were claiming -- that he was just looking for a "big payday" -- Anthony doesn't seem to be after money at all. Sifry writes on Friday:

Anthony is pondering donating the url over to a non-profit group, or trying to continue working with the community gathered around the site to make it into a kind of clearinghouse or forum on the presidential candidates in general.

He is also still planning to vote for Obama!? Alright, so, I know I should feel warm and fuzzy about this, but instead, I'm scratching my head. This guy could have made some money -- at the very least, he could have more adamantly demanded some compensation for his 2.5 year-long (Anthony maintained the page for 2.5 years) labor of love. Why didn't he? Are we really seeing loyalty to the Democratic movement trump selfish desires, did he just give up or did he not have the right counsel? He's a paralegal, right? Where were all his lawyer friends?

Via CJR Daily and Wired, a look at the military's new list of traditional and non-traditional threats:

Yup. In light of the crackdown on milblogging, it only makes sense that the media would be considered a threat on par with al Qaeda, drug cartels, and my personal favorite, warlords. After all, when you're spreading democracy in Iraq, the first thing you want to do is illustrate exactly how hostile you are towards the First Amendment.

I've written at greatlength about the presidential chances of Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel. For a Republican base grown tired of the war and a bumbling president, but still committed to conservative positions on social issues, the anti-war but very culturally conservative Chuck Hagel is the closest thing out there to a perfect candidate -- he's certainly better than the flip-flopping and socially moderate trio of Romney, McCain, and Giuliani.

And as Hagel grows into the role of the White House's chief GOP antagonist (he's the first Republican to say Wolfowitz should step down at the World Bank), he has announced he's mulling an independent run for the presidency. The chance to grab anti-war voters from across the spectrum and Republican voters enchanted by his purist stances on social issues must be mighty appealing. Throw in the rumors that Hagel might partner on the ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is highly effective and almost post-partisan, and you've got some worthwhile '08 drama. (The rumors, by the way, were started by Hagel and Bloomberg themselves in a delectable bit of stagecraft. They had dinner together in early May, then leaked the news and denied its significance in Bloomberg's own wire service.)

So my predictions of a Hagel-Huckabee ticket may not come to pass. Sadly, Hagel-Bloomberg just doesn't have the same ring.

About as different as can be, the Republican senator from Kansas and the Democratic senator from Delaware now have the same plan on Iraq: split it up into three loosely federated regions with one religious sect in each.